Realidise

Instead of pura vida, it's more like dura vida.
- Jody Tinsley (Eric and Silja's dear friend visiting from South Carolina hits the nail on the head!)

Given a long enough time, of course, a wide enough frame, there is nothing said or done, ever, that isn’t ironic in the end.
- Madame Morrible, Wicked by Gregory Maguire)

Still Brokedown on the Mountain: The Saga Continues
Our car troubles aptly signify our constant need to improvise, adapt, overcome, and, in some instances, go crazy. . .

· Two days after the mishap with Stan’s van, our car was still in the shop, so we had to borrow the newly fixed van again (thanks, Stan!) to travel two hours away to San Carlos because Café had to go to the vet. Nago accompanied Chris on the journey and thankfully Wilder and I opted not to go because on the way home, the van blew a tire and Chris and Café sat on the side of the road with the van for several hours while Nago hitched back to the city for tools and a new tire.

· Two days later, with great hope, we went to pick up our Trooper from the mechanic. He said it was ready to go, but it had no gas. Hmmm.. it had a quarter of a tank when we dropped it off…? Chris surmised that the gas was either stolen or the car had been used. The mechanic claimed ignorance of both, so we went to the gas station and filled a gas can, brought it back, put it in the car, and . . .it still didn’t start. Not until after many, many attempts. Aw, see the forlorn car, bruised and beaten…Turns out that amidst all the other problems, the car had a rusty ol’ fuel pump that would overheat and prevent it from starting. Of course, the pump needed to be replaced and the mechanic said he could order and install the new part in the next couple of days. · In the meantime, we needed our car, regardless of its flaws, since we had to return the spendy rental car that day (if it was a rent-to-own kind of agency, we’d probably own a new car by now). The mechanic said we could drive our car so long as we didn’t drive too far and overheat the pump (tricky, since this could be anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes). If this happened, we could be looking at 2 hours or more before the car would start up again. Not an inviting prospect. Been there, done that. So we took the car to town and ran errands and filled the tank with gas but did not turn the engine off until we got home.

· Finally, many more colones and two more days later, we were finally able to get the pump fixed and drive our car out of the garage and up the mountain with optimistic confidence. So far so good! But after a year of consistent breakdowns and car repairs (the car has probably been in the shop more days than it’s been driven), we were finally convinced that we needed a new one. Can you see the sky opening up and the light pouring down upon us?

· So off to San Jose we went this past week to try and purchase another hopefully more reliable car. Doing so would unfortunately deplete the resources with which we had hoped to buy an ATV or motorcycle which, ironically, would have helped us to avoid excessive wear and tear on a car in the first place. Ah, well.

· We got to San Jose and checked out this 1992 Toyota Landcruiser that we fell in love with online but, alas, for many reasons, it was not the one for us and we decided to leave its fate to someone else’s mechanic.

· Chris had already spent hours scouring classified ads and pounding the pavement of shady used-car lots, so we knew it wasn’t going to be easy to find something else that fit our ideal requirements right away (4WD, seats small family and 2 dogs, runs without being towed, costs less than a small house). The Landcruiser we looked at, by the way, was clean-looking, able to leap tall mountains in a single bound, and several thousand dollars cheaper than most its caliber, which is why we were attracted to it in the first place despite its luxuriant addiction to gas. Of course it’s all for the best but . . .now what?

· Well, what would you do if the first car you looked at didn’t work out? … Right. That’s exactly what we did! We bought two all-terrain vehicles! A 1985 Honda Odyssey FL350 (this is not your best-friend’s mini-van), and a 2002 Honda TRX350. We’ve got Chris’ childhood wet dream fulfilled with the glorified go-cart, and our need for a “family” moto met with the four-wheeler. Trips to town are about to become a lot more fun! And, regardless of how our car runs, it will now have fewer opportunities to break down.

· Uh, apparently having fewer opportunities to break down does not necessarily equate to having fewer break downs. I've only been driving the car for 3 days, and the clutch has already gone out on me. The car is back in the shop, but at least this time we're not stranded! Barring any torrential downpours, I'll be headed to the market with Wilder tomorrow on our new ATV! (While riding in such conditions is doable, it is not desirable.)

·

Doggone It: Dogs. They play and they run, they love and protect. They also lick their butts and bite their paws, whine and bark, and fight over toys and for everyone’s attention, and dig holes into couch cushions and leave dead baby mice in the corners. Our dogs! . ..Café has grown so much and she and Phoebe are at once each other’s daughter, sister, mother, friend, enemy. They take care of each other, they loathe each other, they keep each other both in and out of trouble. They are so cute. BUT, if that little bitch Café pees on our bed one more time . . . .!!!! She has quickly become a part of the family and we couldn't live without her, but the novelty of having a puppy has worn off a bit for us all -- for Phoebe and Wilder who both battle her sharp, gnawing little puppy teeth daily, for the cats who so do NOT want to play, and for Mami and Papi who sometimes still have to pick up her sh*t from the floor. But, oh, we love our dogs so!

Wilder: Next week Wilder will be 4 years old. As he morphs from a toddler into a full-blown kid, his activities and interests encompass both stages. He is still throwing tantrums (let's just say he's developed a very imaginative sense of self-expression), and is into dinosaurs (the bigger and badder the better), Superheroes (why does Superman wear his undies on the outside?), stories (oral improvisation), and -- much to my chagrin and despite my attempts to redirect his attention otherwise -- any and all pointy, phallus-type objects that can be wielded as wands, swords, axes, or machetes .... He thankfully balances out this expression of testosterone with a generous and loving disposition, an appreciation for the color pink, and generally good table manners. ;) He is, however, quite stubborn and bossy (How odd, considering Chris and I are so NOT stubborn or bossy! I swear. No, we're not. We are not! Shut up! Stop laughing!). ... We are learning to find the humor in this little tyrant as well as the tyrants in ourselves. Wilder likes to say, "Today, I'm in charge." Well, as you can see, he's definitely in charge of something. I wish I could say the same!

Other Kids: It’s no rumor – you can write it on the bathroom walls -- Jenny, the goat, is knocked up! For real, she is pregnant by another goat’s babydaddy. But before you start pegging Jenny with unsavory titles rhyming with “so” for cavorting with another girl’s boyfriend, please understand that the poor dear was delivered into this love triangle quite unwittingly… But I think she was grateful for the company. In any case, her pregnancy is the result of a couple months' worth of cavorting with Nago’s goat, Romazon, (whom we have lovingly dubbed Mater, less for his reproductive proclivities than his resemblance to the dimwitted towtruck at the bottom of the gene pool in “Cars”). The word on the street, er campo, is that she’s incubating two wee wittle goats – whom Wilder and I have already dubbed Sparkle and Spin, after one of our favorite books. (I guess if there turns out to be just one, we can call it Sprinkle.) As we await their arrival, we’re making Jenny’s casita more comfortable and electrifying the fence to protect her forthcoming progeny from the coyotes. Sometimes you have to help ensure that the weakest survive to be the fittest! For awhile there, the coyotes were eating Stan’s chickens. And stealthily so, because we never heard a thing. But not too long ago we heard them yipping through the front yard – so close and so crazy sounding that not even the dogs wanted to go outside. Coyote song, we’ve found, is ominous in it’s frantic, high-pitched cacophony, echoing as it does over the hills, falling on the heels of the pack. Wild!